3.
Introduction
• Question:
– What are business models and how do practitioners use them?
• Business models definition vary widely
– Used as termed of convenience by press and practice
community
• Business models relevant for entrepreneurship
– Need for a convergent construct
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8.
Literature Review
• Theme 4: Business Models as Innovation Form
– Idea: Processual configuration linked to evolution or application
of firm technology.
– Business model as focusing device between technology
development and economic value creation.
– Idea that business models adjust in parallel to firm’s life-cycle
evolution.
– But:
• Unclear linkages between business model and organizational
structure innovation.
– What precedes what and how it is influenced.
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9.
Literature Review
• Theme 5: Business Models as Opportunity Facilitator
– Idea: Enactment and implementation tied to an opportunity
landscape.
– Business model as the link between the entrepreneurial
appraisal of the opportunity and its exploitation.
– If opportunity is uncertain, business model are equated to
“business idea” or firm’s value creation mechanism.
– But:
• Need to explain better the mechanisms that connect the underlying
opportunity with the business model.
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13.
Discussion
• Absence of support in practitioners language for
narrative perspectives of the business model.
– Not matching with narrative legitimating efforts.
• Discourse analysis supports research streams that link
business models to resources and transactive structures
(Amit & Zott 2001).
• Business models as Opportunity-Centric Design
– Business models are not the activities, but the structure that
bound and connect the firm’s core activity set in service to a
specific set of goals (Winder & Szulanski 2001), for example to
enact a commercial opportunity.
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14.
Discussion
• Business Models, Strategy and Entrepreneurship
– Strategy is a dynamic set of initiatives, activities and processes
• Linked to reflexive change.
• Competitor or environment centric.
– Business model is a static configuration of organizational
elements and activity characteristics.
• They are not a recipe for change.
• Opportunity-centric.
– Firm viability requires a value structure to replenish or augment
the firm’s resource base.
– Business model as a core building block of the entrepreneurial
enactment process.
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27.
Discussion & Conclusion
• Business model is a new unit of analysis
– Bridges the firm and the network
• Business model researchers adopt a holistic and system
perspective
– Looking at the content and the process.
• Organizational activities (processes, functionalities or
transactions) are dominant elements of business model
definition.
• Business model literature has shifted emphasis from value
capture to value creation
– Centrality of the concept of value in the business model literature.
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30.
Ideas for discussion on Business Models
• Do business models need to be sensitive to competitive
environment?
– If so, what is strategy and what are business models?
– Academics VS Practitioners??
• Business Model as resources, transactions & value creation
• Or Business Models as simplified entrepreneur’s business plans.
• Business Model fit in entrepreneurship?
– Needed to give shape to your incipient idea?
• Build your Business Model Canvas (Alex Osterwalder)
– Part of the idea validation and exploitation process?
• Use it to pivot (experiment) around your initial hypotheses (Eric Ries & Steve
Blank) and learn from it.
• In Entrepreneurship research:
– Are we ready to build research around Business Models?
• BM designs as explanatory variables for entrepreneurship performance?
• BM definition as an under researched process, influence of entrepreneurs
cognitive elements, past experiences/knowledge…
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